UPDATE: Icy rescue from Heart Lake

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Wolfgang Pechmann, 62, with Moses. He helped pull a woman and her dog from frigid Heart Lake Sunday afternoon.

To the rescue

Former Bramptonian Shamsi Ladak and her husband, Greg Millett, both 31, teamed up with Brampton's Wolfgang Pechmann to rescue a woman who fell through the ice on Heart Lake, in the Heart Lake Conservation Area, Sunday.

Footprints of rescuers

Wolfgang Pechmann knows a thing or two about falling through the ice into frigid water.
It happened to him 15 or 20 years ago, while snowmobiling near his northern Ontario cottage. He was helped by a friend and others.
So, when he saw a woman in her 50s sink through the thin layer of ice on Heart Lake Sunday afternoon, he quickly reacted and, with the help of Toronto high school teachers Greg Millett and his wife Shamsi Ladak, saved the woman and her dog, Angel.
Pechmann was out walking his 82 pound Husky/Malamute cross, Moses, just before 2 p.m. He saw the unidentified woman with a throwing stick at the edge of the lake.
“She was standing up, kneeling down, I figured she was playing with the dog,” he said.
But then he noticed the dog appeared to be in trouble, and he started walking faster.
As he did, he saw her walk out onto the ice and then go through the ice, too far away still for him to shout out a warning.
“She just floated in, just sank in,” said the 62-year-old project/installation manager at Applied Electronics.
Surprisingly, she is the fourth person to fall through thin ice in Brampton since Christmas Day, and not the first to do so while trying to rescue their dog, according to fire officials.
The icy water was up to her neck, Pechmann said, she appeared to be treading water, and holding onto her dog.
He tied Moses to a tree, took off his coat and ventured onto the ice, laying flat on his stomach.
“I know what it’s like. I know a fair amount of the dangers involved,” he said, explaining that he took off his coat so he would have something dry to put on if he fell through.
Then he heard the ice crack, and heeded the warning.
“I knew two people in the water was not so good,” he said, so he went back to get his dog’s leash.
That’s when Millett and Ladak, both 31 and physical education teachers for the Toronto District School Board, arrived on the scene. They live in Toronto, but were in Brampton visiting Ladak’s parents (Ladak grew up in Brampton) when they decided spur of the moment to take a walk around Heart Lake Conservation Area. They spotted the woman’s red scarf first, and ran to help.
Ladak called 911, while Pechmann and Millett crawled out onto the ice with the 26-foot-long heavy-duty dog leash, throwing it out to the struggling woman.
Pechmann said nothing, concentrating on what he was doing, while Millett offered encouragement and reassurances that they would get her out, telling her to keep moving to try to stay warm.
“I think her name was Pat,” Millett said. “My biggest concern was hypothermia. At one point her words were a little slurred and laboured.”
She insisted they pull her dog out first, and she put the leash on the black Labrador. Both Pechmann and Millett say they understand a dog owner’s love for their pet, and once the dog was out, Pechmann took it back to shore.
Meanwhile, the woman got the leash around her body and Millett called out instructions. He told her that, on the count of three, he wanted her to start kicking and he was going to pull “as hard as I can.”
“She kicked as hard as she could, and she finally hit a solid piece of ice and she was able to kick and pull herself up,” Millett said.
Ladak was on her cellphone during the dramatic rescue, giving detailed information and directions for emergency crews, and preparing them for the possibility that the rescuers could need rescuing if things went awry. A teacher at Etobicoke Year-Round Alternative school and a former University of Toronto track star, she raced up to the locked gate at the conservation area entrance and met paramedics. She had the presence of mind to forewarn them that the gate was locked, so they were prepared with bolt cutters. She guided them to the scene.
Millett and Pechmann helped the victim to shore, took off her coat and wrapped her in Ladak’s jacket, removed her boots and handed her over to the paramedics.
Pechmann estimates she was in the water between five and 10 minutes.
“I think she was a bit in shock when we got her out,” he said. “I think, if I hadn’t have seen her, she wouldn’t have made it.”
The area is isolated at this time of year, with very few people walking through, except for the odd dog walker.
Pechmann, Millett and Ladak all agree they don’t want to make “a big fuss” about it. They saw someone in trouble, and responded.
“I’m not going to suggest it was the most textbook of rescues,” said Millett, who teaches at York Humber High School. “You see something and you just try to help.”
He said he believes anyone would have done the same thing.
All three expressed relief that the victim and her dog are okay.
“We were very happy we were there and able to help,” Millett said. “Our primary concern is that the woman is okay.”
“I’m glad she’s okay,” Pechmann agreed. “I think, a little longer, she’d be gone.”
Pechmann’s wife, Angelika, was amazed when he told her what had happened.
“I’m just so proud,” she said. “She (the victim) was very, very lucky.”